Red Bull Rampage 2012 Finals Recap

Best of Times, Worst of Times

October 7th, 2012

Every two years in October, thousands of people descend on south-west Utah – most popular as a destination where tourists tread lightly in Zion National Park – to witness a few dozen crazed freeriders sculpt and subsequently smash the hills outside Virgin, just a few kilometres south of the park boundary. The idea behind Red Bull Rampage is a far cry from the pristine and sterile canyons of Zion; the competition site has evolved, becoming more and more sculpted over three runnings at the current location, yet it retains its rugged and unpredictable underpinnings.

Dozens of competitors, their friends and entourages, support crews and industry types, hundreds of media, and 1500 lucky spectators have made their way from all around the world to come here. The base area off Hwy 9 is a mix of campers and pickup trucks, Subaru wagons with roof boxes and Mini Coopers with giant cans of energy drink strapped to their backs. From here everyone treks four miles up into the hills to the Rampage site, and then scrambles up the steep and loose slopes to catch the action.

While Friday’s Rampage Qualifier was a spectacle in itself, the stakes were raised Sunday for the Finals, where pre-qualified riders would join those who secured their spot two days previous. When the dust settled from pre-existing injuries and those sustained in Saturday’s practice day, only 20 riders actually put their tires to the dirt in the Final round. BC riders represented big time, with 8 of the 20 hailing from our province – more than any other country even supplied. Along with that coastal Canadian contingent came a train of supporters, giving the riders an extra boost knowing their home town was with them.

The course at Rampage is absolutely mind-blowing. The ridge that Red Bull has used for the contest since 2008 has infinite possibilities, and the riders took full advantage of it. This created a challenge for photographers on a scale much larger than that of Crankworx, compounded by NBC’s moratorium on publishing video from the entire event. The majority of the riders rode to looker’s right or straight down the middle; the judges positioned themselves in a place they could see most of the course. In fact, only Cam McCaul’s canyon gap, on the far left, necessitated a move for the judges.

Judges used all technology available, including video replay, to make their decisions. Photo ~ Matt Dennison

While there seems to be some amount of controversy and speculation about judging bias at this contest, one fairly obvious trend stuck out in the finals: in order for a rider to receive a competitive score, they had to ride some burly lines on the slope immediately under the start gate, hit some big tricks as well as smaller ones along the way, and keep it all together right to the bottom. As a side note, I also heard some chirping in weeks previous about too many slopestyle features on the course – on the ground, this just wasn’t the case. The ramps and booters were eclipsed by natural terraintm, and riders who stuck to the easy stuff weren’t rewarded for it.

The huge geographic space and judging-slash-live broadcasting at Rampage means that riders run in the same order on both runs; this contrasts other competitions where riders take their second run based on how they placed in the first – often resulting in riders skipping out on the second run because they know they’ve already won. Because of this, competition at Rampage is kept healthy and spectators happy right to the end… no anticlimactic endings here. I’ll let the photos tell the rest of this story…

Bearclaw built the gnar-est line off the top, and shredded it clean on both runs. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to hold it together down below. Photo ~ Morgan Taylor

Brandon Semenuk and his crew built a sweet stepdown transfer, which he nailed on both runs. He was, however, not to be a repeat Rampage winner, crashing out of both runs. Still, finishing ahead of Martin Soderstrom meant Brandon came away with the FMB World Tour overall win. Nug Sequence ~ Matt Dennison